In case it wasn't obvious from his sci-fi comedy show The Orville, TV guru Seth MacFarlane is a huge, huge Trekkie. The Orville, in its construction, lighting and character types, closely resembles Star Trek: The Next Generation, only with a few crude jokes and careless comments added throughout. MacFarlane also once introduced William Shatner, as Captain Kirk, to the big screen at the Academy Awards. Some may even know about the Star Trek fan film MacFarlane made while still in high schoolwhere he introduced himself as Captain Kirk.

His Trekkie credentials don't stop there. On one of the Next Generation Blu-rays, MacFarlane hosted a commentary track for the episode "Cause and Effect", talking to the episode's writer, Brannon Braga. He was also in the documentary Trek Nation and included countless references to Star Trek. in his animated sitcoms "Family Guy," "American Dad!" and "The Cleveland Show." Yes, MacFarlane has always been a die-hard Star Trek fan.

So it must have been a formative experience for him to appear on Star Trek: Enterprise. Many Trekkies may have forgotten this, but MacFarlane played a character named Ensign Rivers in two episodes of that series. He didn't have a substantial role, but his appearance solidifies him as a canon character throughout Trek lore. Ensign Rivers first appeared in the season 3 episode "The Forgotten" (April 28, 2004) as an unnamed engineer who is condemned by Trip Tucker (Connor Trineer), the Enterprise's chief of engineering. He also appeared in the fourth season episode "Trouble" (February 18, 2005) when his character was finally given a name. It seems that Ensign Rivers didn't like his experience on the Enterprise, as he was serving on the new ship, the USS Columbia, the second we saw him.

In "The Forgotten", the USS Enterprise is recovering from the fire in the previous episodes, having to repair many of its systems. Trip Tucker is sleep deprived and overtiredmust oversee every aspect of the ship's engine improvements. Ensign Rivers is summarily condemned for missing a microfracture in the engine's magnesium casing. Rivers defends himself by taking a pressure test, but that wasn't enough for an angry Tucker. That's his entire cameo in The Forgotten.

Rivers does appear again, however, a few additional times in "Trouble," but only to deliver lines like "Hey, sir" and "Here's the diagnostics you asked for" and "The dilithium matrix is ​​stable." He has maybe one minute of screen time overall. In one scene, he questions why Tripp wants the dilithium die aligned to within .3 microns when the manual says .5 is acceptable. Ensign Rivers is by no means a dynamic or complete character, but it sure was exciting for MacFarlane to read classic Star Trek technobabble. It's the technobabble and technical attention to detail that brings so many Trekkies back to the franchise, so MacFarlane was probably quite comfortable. Not all Star Trek actors liked it.

Because Rivers was played by a recognizable celebrity like MacFarlane, his character was a little more recognizable than most of the random engineers, doctors, and bridge officers on Trek. As such, Ensign Rivers received his own playing card in the 2006 edition of the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, a popular and extensive game that was first published in 1994 and has been expanding ever since. On his card, Ensign Rivers finally got Stewart's name, which was no doubt a deliberate reference to Stewie Griffin, a character MacFarlane plays on his show Family Guy.